Seymour Fischer: I just pointed with my finger and OrCam read to me

Seven years ago, Seymour Fischer began seeing black spots in his field of vision. He visited several doctors and underwent treatments and two operations. Despite this, due to a combination of glaucoma and other conditions, he became almost blind.

Until then, Seymour was the chief pharmacist at Magen David Adom, the Israeli equivalent of the Red Cross. Prior to that he had worked as a pharmacist at the Asaf Ha-Rofeh hospital near Tel Aviv, ever since moving to Israel from Johannesburg, South Africa. When he began to lose his sight, he had to stop working because he couldn’t read the medicine labels properly.

Due to his visual impairment, Seymour struggled with reading. When he looked at a screen, he would see only lines. He could read newspaper headlines, but magnifying glasses were impractical for the article text because he needed to precisely locate each section of text. It took half an hour to read a short article because he would keep losing his place.

Then, Seymour discovered OrCam. On his 80^th birthday, his son’s father-in-law gave him an OrCam pamphlet and told him about OrCam. The first time he used the OrCam MyReader “I got very excited, because I could just point with my finger and it read to me.”

Seymour felt much more comfortable reading books and newspapers, and was even able to pick up and read an entire book, Sophie’s Choice.

“I am much more independent, I couldn’t read a book before OrCam and now that’s very easy for me.”